Society would be better off if people didn’t maintain a monopoly on their (voices, words, creative works)
I feel like things are consistent with OpenAI’s public statements, not sure why
The NDA thing:
Making a mountain out of a molehill
The lots of people leaving OpenAI thing:
Yeah, that’s probably kinda bad
EA/AI Safety shouldn’t define itself by opposition to a thing, that’s pretty unhealthy
Also strategically unsound? Puts the momentum in the hands of OpenAI; broadly makes them seem like more of a threat
Positioning your movement as the enemy of a thing is fraught
Especially when the thing is as powerful as “progress”
OpenAI seems willing to update in response to what the press and individuals are saying. This seems good and laudable?
The thesis of “let’s just put out the models and let people work with them” seems to have been more right than wrong
In general incremental fast iteration is better than doing lots of planning up front. It doesn’t feel like we’re in a Yudkowskian FOOM world.
Also just baseline, things like ChatGPT and Copilot have just been good
Sam Altman is probably like, a reasonably good person
People reliably overestimate how much of a company’s choices are directly the result of the leader’s choices, vs random subordinates or communications drops